The greatest improvements often come from the simplest solutions. Beam Mobility recently upgraded its artificial intelligence (AI) operational system, dubbed 'Questbox,' with a Clean Up tool focused on street tidiness and pedestrian safety. This relatively straightforward upgrade significantly has  improved Beam's operational responsiveness and parking compliance rates, enhancing urban amenity.

Why Beam Mobility Upgraded its System

Beam Mobility provides e-scooters, e-bikes, and e-mopeds to cities across Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea, and the Republic of Türkiye. The company is committed to providing safer and more sustainable travel options beyond cars. However, managing thousands of devices across so many cities is a complex task.

Beam's advanced Questbox AI system analyzes information from hundreds of different data types and uses this data to generate and prioritize operational tasks. The tasks the AI system handles include:

• Managing device batteries
• Automating maintenance needs, such as quality checks
• Addressing reported parking issues and rider feedback
• Effectively managing supply and demand in real-time

Beam's Questbox technology helped establish an efficient operation that kept streets clean with leading industry parking compliance rates.  However, pedestrian safety, particularly as it is affected by vehicle parking, continues to be one of the industry’s most significant challenges. Beam felt further improvements could be made to better support the industry's growth.

When Beam conducted internal research, the company realized its Questbox system wasn't perfect at detecting parking problems and, therefore, wasn't guiding local staff to take the small but critical initiative to move vehicles short distances for the purpose of clearing walking paths during their shifts. This caused some simple but important street cleanup responsibilities to be overlooked.

Introducing the Clean Up Tool

“We used hundreds of data sources, such as data from the vehicle and our mobile app, as well as user-submitted information like parking photos, to guide our staff. However, when we talked to our team on the ground, we noticed we were missing some important vehicle cleanups critical for pedestrian safety,” says Deb Gangopadhyay, President of Beam. “Adding our Clean Up tool has transformed this process by empowering and encouraging staff to clean up more frequently and with greater safety compliance. These cleanups, each accompanied by before-and-after photos, are reviewed to provide training feedback to improve local parking compliance and safety. Since its launch in March 2024, Beam has been testing this new tool, resulting in over 200,000 additional vehicles being cleaned up effectively.”

Beam's new Clean Up tool is a straightforward addition to Questbox that lets staff quickly record important but short vehicle relocations with before-and-after photos. The Clean Up tool checks these small actions for quality and provides feedback on quality and safety compliance. The quality of these small clean-ups is now measured similarly to other tasks, such as battery swaps, and the sheer number of successful cleanups shows how vital these tasks are for cities.

The Impact of Beam's Clean Up Tool

The Clean Up tool improved Beam's operations by blending AI-driven efficiency with human judgment. AI-streamlined processes help Beam maximize its resources and enable staff to respond to cleanup tasks more quickly. Meanwhile, human oversight provides essential attention to detail that AI simply can't always manage, especially when it comes to pedestrian safety. This allows Beam to keep the streets neat and ultimately improve rider and pedestrian accessibility.

Beam recently achieved an audited parking compliance rate of 98% in a major New Zealand city — a rate significantly higher than industry standards.

Looking to the Future at Beam Mobility

In the end, the Clean Up tool wasn't just about making Beam's Questbox technology smarter. Ultimately, it was about supporting our staff, our riders, and the cities that use Beam with innovative tools that allow for improved staff response rates and enhanced overall service quality. This simple addition to Questbox has improved Beam Mobility's value to cities, proving that the greatest improvements sometimes come from the simplest solutions.

Source: Tech Times